


and we'll never be holy

by bluexshift



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work, Sempersol Peak
Genre: M/M, more dnd oc fic yay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:21:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25905775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluexshift/pseuds/bluexshift
Summary: an account of a relatively ordinary few days in nate and sebastian's lives, after byzantium but before illyria
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Kudos: 1





	and we'll never be holy

**Author's Note:**

> yeah hi it's more writing about my dnd character and his childhood sweetheart but i'm stoked to actually have finished this so it's going up to make my word count look better
> 
> this is more of an actual story than my other work about them, which you should check out if you stumble across this because it has in the notes of it how they've ended up
> 
> and if u clicked on this, thank u for even just getting this far!!

New day, new place, new faces – both around us and _for_ us. The contents of my disguise kit are running low, and we’ll have to make sure we restock here, but we have enough for a short stay to swindle some coin, at least. I dyed my hair this morning, a weird auburn/copper colour, and I keep forgetting about it.

“I prefer you blond,” Sebastian says, “but you still look cute.”

“I’m not cute.” I know I’m being petulant, but still. Cute is for baby animals and children and other things we don’t get to see or have or be. I’d accept handsome or good-looking or even pretty, but _cute_?

“Like, really cute. Super adorable.”

“ _You’re_ cute.”

He grins. “Oh, yeah, I know. Thanks.”

Motherfucker. I sigh, loudly. “I know you think you’re funny, Sebastian, but you’re not. You’re really not.”

“Agree to disagree,” he says, bringing my hand up from where he holds it in his and kissing the back of it. The sun grows hotter as the morning progresses – we’re nearing the edges of the desert now and I can barely take it even after all these years - but it doesn’t even hold a candle to my chest right now. I don’t understand how he can still make me _feel_ quite this intensely, even though we’ve been together for over three years now, and even though we just make sense, my emotions never seem to.

“So what are our names gonna be anyway?” Sebastian asks after a stretch of comfortable silence. “I’m thinking, ‘Balthazar, mystical, eternally youthful travelling vendor of potions and ointments rare and magical’-“ he punctuates this with a wave of his hand, putting on this ridiculous voice – “and you can be my assistant.”

“Okay, well, we’re still low on fake stock, so let’s not go with that as the main draw. I was thinking less assistant and more… We haven’t done long-lost son of an Illyrian noble for a while?”

“True, but why would you be travelling with me then?”

“You are… helping me reclaim my birthright… and I’ve promised you a place in my court or whatever, but we just need a _little_ more coin to get me there. How about that?” I ask.

“So you’re working as my assistant then?” he grins.

“By the gods, you have a _thing_ and it is _weird.”_

“I love you too.”

We take shelter under a gnarled tree, branches winding and intertwining to form an ideal canopy to protect us as the sun hit its highest point. Sharing a few handfuls of dried fruit between us, I hope that it will be enough to sustain us until we reach this village and a hot meal. It’s been far too long since I tasted fresh fruit, and I miss it, but I know that one day Bastya and I will find somewhere where we no longer have to run for fear of capture, and we can do honest work and taste stability again.

We don’t make it before nightfall, but we’re close, maybe two hours further. We decide to camp for one more night rather than push through, despite our dinner consisting of some dry oat biscuits – come the morning, we’re Alexander and fucking _Balthazar_ , which, don’t even get me started, I’m a sucker for this man and his ridiculous ideas. It means that tonight, we can at least be us.

“Babe?” he murmurs from my chest. I had thought he was asleep, while I watched the stars. The fire is low, but magical, so keeps us as warm as the last of the wine from his wineskin. (“Your wine will taste better than this,” I’d said, but truth be told it wasn’t half bad.)

“Mm?”

“How much longer do you think we’ll be doing this?” he asks. I’m a little taken aback – it’s a strange question for him.

“What, running? Or the cons?” I ask. He hums, so I take it to mean both. “A few more years, maybe? Illyria isn’t that big, so once we’ve circuited it and come back down through Akaan we should be forgotten in Byzantium and have enough money for the land. Why?”

He sighs. “I’m just… tired, sometimes. It’s okay - tell me about the vineyard.”

That’s something he asks for often, a story of how we’ll make it out, a story I love to tell. The details have changed so often over the years, but this one – this one we really could achieve, a place of our own where we’re free and where we are the only ones who can make decisions for ourselves. And I do tell him, this time speculating on what the apprentices we’ll take could be like. We probably won’t have kids of our own, but they might, so I talk about how they’re always welcome with us, how they play in our fields and we yell about the grapes but it’s fine, we don’t mind, not really.

When I run out of steam, he kisses my cheek. “Mine,” he whispers - I don’t think I was meant to hear, but that’s okay, because he’s right. I am his, and he is mine.

The town is one of the rare ones where some central buildings are inhabited all year round, whilst the surrounds fluctuate as groups move through the area. I couldn’t say for certain whether it was at its highest or lowest capacity; I would err on the side of low, though. We book a twin room at an inn without issue – the barkeep doesn’t really seem to care about anything much, which is somewhat lucky for us. I managed to convince Sebastian to drop the “eternally youthful” thing, so he doesn’t show us up with that when we make small talk about who we are and what we do.

The inn is small, and well-lived in, and I hit my head on the low doorframe as we enter the room. Sebastian grimaces. “You okay?”

“Fine,” I scowl, rubbing my forehead. “Just, you know, bitter than no one ever seems to consider people can be tall. I’m not even that tall! What if a goliath wanted to stay here?”

“Well, height is a choice,” he says, taking the bedding off one of the beds and piling it on the other.

I raise an eyebrow. “And you chose that?”

He grins as he approaches, wrapping his arms around my neck. “Sure. Couldn’t do this otherwise, could I?” He jumps then, wrapping his legs around my waist, and I catch him easily.

We leave the room a little later than planned.

I don’t want to stay long here at all, so we’re mostly looking for a quick, easy target. I prefer these over the long cons, although the drawback of them is we can’t really go back to a place after we’ve hit it once. But it’s less chance of us being caught out and just plain _caught_. I wonder, sometimes, if they’re still looking – sure, I doubt it after 7 years, but there’s always that chance.

The fortunate thing about places like this is that it’s a convenient thoroughfare for merchants and traders. We walk the streets for a few hours – best to hit a travelling vendor, without friends for back up – and retire back to the tavern with a vague roadmap of where we are, as well as a restock of our ration supplies. Tonight, I’m to stay there, chatting to anyone who’ll listen, while Sebastian scopes out the surrounding area for us, both to plan out escape routes and keep an eye out for anything that would be easy to hit in the evening.

I head up to the room after a few hours of being eyed up, flirted with, and patronised far too much for my liking, and he’s already there, in pyjamas and sprawled on the bed reading.

“Nice of you to let me know you were back already,” I grumble.

He rests the book open on his chest and smiles at me. “Didn’t want to interrupt your fun. Some of those conversations looked… riveting.”

“ _Ugh._ I feel like I need to wash the sleaze off me.” This room has a tub in it, separated by just a folding screen, and I set it running before I start getting ready for bed. “I’m pretty sure they all bought it, but I don’t know how good of a score any of them would be. Could maybe fleece one or two, but I don’t know if that’d even be worth the time.”

“No, not really. I found something interesting, though.”

I step into the tub carefully, the water hot. “Oh?” Normally on evenings like this, I’d go for a cool bath, but I do feel quite grimy after all that. Never did like eyes on me, but I’m a decent enough distraction.

“Merchant by the name of Oritias Noran, arrived two months ago and set up in an empty building three doors down. By all accounts, he’s made few friends here by being an arrogant cunt, but he does have his own staff to watch out for. Too arrogant to set up decent security measures, though. There’s a whole window onto the back street with no magical protection at all, I checked.”

“Wares?”

“Jewellery mostly, most of it fake, but there’s some gemstones and maybe a magical piece or two.”

Not a bad idea. Even if the jewels are fake, the gold he’d swindled from the local populace wouldn’t be. “If he’s that up himself, he’d probably jump at the chance to have foreign nobility in debt to him.”

“If we can get you a meeting with him here, I’ll rob the place while he’s distracted. And we’d be in message range the whole time – pretty solid, right?” he smiles, smugly, still looking at his book.

“An old-fashioned burglary. I like i- ah, fuck it.”

He looks up at me and frowns. “What? What’s wrong?”

“No, it’s not- nothing to do with the planning, I just-“ I point to my bag, over on the other side of the room –“left the shampoo and conditioner in there.”

“Oh. Have to get out and get it, won’t you?”

I sigh dramatically, and sag over the side of the tub. “Please, Basha.”

“No.”

“Babe. Darling. Sweetheart. Love of my life. Bringer of mislaid hygiene products.”

He rolls his head back and groans exasperatedly, and equally as dramatically, but he does set the book down and get them for me. “You could just have used mage hand instead of inconveniencing me, you know,” he grumbles, handing them over.

“I know. But this way, we both win,” I say, as I grab his shirt and pull him down into a kiss. “Thank you.”

He dips his hand in the tub and splashes water in my face, as he calls me a prick under his breath, but he’s smiling too.

I’m woken up first by nails digging into my forearm, and quiet whimpers stir me into consciousness. In sleep, as usual we’ve found ourselves cuddled together, which usually helps fend off night terrors, but he’s shaking apart in my arms again and I wish I could stop it all together.

I can’t, but I can wake him up and stop this one from getting any worse.

It takes a couple minutes of trying, of gently calling his name, before he gasps awake, eyes wide, frantically searching the dark room with tears unshed.

“Hey hey hey, here, I’m here, I’m here, you’re okay, I’m okay,” I soothe, letting him follow my voice rather than touch his face yet. His eyes meet mine, and the relief is palpable.

“Hey,” he gets out with heavy breaths.

“Hey,” I say again, and smile as reassuringly as I can. “Do you want to talk about this one?” I ask, and he shakes his head.

“Look at you,” he whispers instead. “Golden hair, golden eyes, golden heart. It’s like you’re the sun, and I’m the moon, and the moon can’t shine without the sun’s light.”

I shake my head. “The moon is beautiful, and powerful, and mysterious, and the moon is subtle, it allows the stars to be seen, not like the clumsy sun.”

His hands move to hold my face, his thumbs tracing underneath my eyes. “And the sun is brilliant, and bright, and without it, things can’t grow and flourish. Stop trying to argue with me about this. They’re the perfect opposites, the oldest lovers, the greatest team.” He kisses me then, and my line of thought falters for a moment.

“They meet so rarely; don’t you think it’s tragic? I don’t want that to be us,” I say, after a minute or so, speaking against his lips.

“But when they do meet, it’s magic, isn’t it? Besides, I see us more… we’re a long summer evening, when the moon rises while the sun’s still out. The kind that you wish could last forever.”

“And we will,” I say, and I kiss him, and we don’t say another word until we fall asleep again.

We spend a full day wandering the shops again, browsing, engaging in small talk and sharing titbits of information from our cover stories, enough so that it sounds natural, but that enough pieces would get around for someone big-headed – Oritias, hopefully - to piece together the full picture and seek us out first. It’s largely uneventful, though I do successfully steal a few pieces of make-up and a couple of hair dyes while Sebastian’s brightness distracts the shopkeepers. It’s not a lot, but I won’t chance our luck too much.

We decide that tonight is a date night, and it’s my turn to sort it; so I go out alone in the early evening. I pick up some flowers, some incense, fresh fruits, and an assorted box of lauzinaj, before heading into the first restaurant that advertises dishes to take home and ordering mezze. It costs… far more than I would like it to, but I love the lightness and variety of it, and Sebastian likes to cover my eyes and make me guess what I’m eating for whatever reason, so it’ll be perfect.

The evening is peaceful, and pretty damn close to perfect. We pile the pillows on the floor, get distracted and have sex on them, lounge about eating, drink from the bottle, wearing just robes, like I imagine rich people do, get distracted a couple more times. Basha plays his game, and loves it. I think it’s kind of weird, but so long as he’s happy, I’ll play along.

He falls asleep first, obviously worn out from the previous night, but I lie awake for hours – I’ve never needed to sleep much, but to the point where I would estimate that it’s gone 2am and yet, I’m still thinking. I extricate myself from Sebastian’s grip, hoping that it won’t trigger another nightmare, and dress simply. As I head downstairs, I hope that the inn is closed, and I can get some night air in peace.

“Can’t sleep?” the barkeep calls out as I enter the main room, without even looking up from the glass she’s cleaning. The tavern is empty now, the lights low, the ashtrays still smoking, and the air still heavy with sweat. I look at her now, properly look. She must be in her late 40’s, long black plait streaked with grey, her face slightly weather-worn. Every bit of her skin that I can see – not much, just face and neck, hands and forearms – is littered with small scars long healed over, evidence of fights, probably, randomly placed as they are. She has next to no jewellery on, except for what I assume is a wedding band, but as she moves, I catch sight of a matching ring hanging from a chain around her neck.

“Nah. Was just going to poke my head out the door for some air, if that’s okay,” I shrug. I don’t know why I shrug, since she’s still not even looking at me.

“Sit.”

“What?”

She finally looks up at me then, and gestures to a stool at the bar. “Sit! Have a drink with me,” she says, in a tone of voice that makes it apparent that although it’s a genuine invitation, I would be the world’s biggest arsehole to turn it down.

I sit, and she busies herself pouring two beers while my fingers restlessly tap the bar counter. She slides one to me, and I just about catch it, though a little bit splashes over the side and over my fingers. She throws me a cloth, and I do catch that, thankfully. I mop up as she comes around the bar and takes a seat right beside me.

She holds up her tankard, and I clank mine against it, and we spend a minute in companionable silence. It’s nice, actually.

“So,” she says eventually. “How long you boys been together?”

“Uh– oh, no uh. We’re just travelling together,” I say. It’s not that I want to _deny_ it, but the less truth that people know about us, the better.

“Well that’s a fuckin’ lie. Even if I didn’t know that you sleep in the same bed, you’re both really shit at hiding the way you look at each other.”

Well. I don’t really know what to say to that. So I stammer a bit, and I’m pretty sure my face is an interesting colour, but she laughs.

“It’s okay kid, I get it. When I first met my wife, I didn’t want anyone to know how I felt – not because I was ashamed or anything, but when you’re passing through places constantly, you don’t want to leave too much of yourself behind.”

“Oh. Huh. Is your wife-?” I point at her necklace. I don’t really know how to say what I mean, but she understands all the same. I think she understands more than I realised, sees more than she lets on.

“Ah, yeah. Good eyes, kid. She died fifteen years past,” she says, and lifts her tankard. I go to offer condolences, but she stops me with a raised hand, drinking deep before she speaks again. “You don’t need to say you’re sorry, though you’re sweet to want to. It was natural, though premature. I knew it was coming and I got to be with her, say goodbye. I’ve made my peace with it.”

I exhale, slowly. “I don’t want to sound rude, but… why are you telling me all this? Doesn’t that contradict what you said about leaving too much of yourself behind?” I ask.

“Look, ki- I’m not gonna keep calling you kid. I’m Adira. What’s your name?”

“Alexander.”

She looks at me, unimpressed. “Let’s try that again. What’s your _name_ , son.”

“…Nate,” I quietly admit. It’s not like there’s anyone to overhear me, but damn if it isn’t annoying that I’m clearly so transparent still.

“Look, Nate. You remind me a lot of me when I was younger and far more hopeful, getting up to all kinds of scandals with the person I loved most in the world, scandals that I’m sure still have monetary rewards going. I don’t think you’ll be here much longer, so maybe I can do some good by you – if you haven’t left anything of yourself behind, how can you say you lived?”

“W-“

“Shh. Rhetorical question. I thought for years that it didn’t matter, because I had Veda and she had me, and nobody else mattered. And then I found myself alone, without a single soul out there who gave a damn about me. Now I hope you never, ever have to know what that’s like, but I want you to think about it. What of you, you specifically, are you leaving behind you? And is it a version of you that you’re proud of?”

No.

No, not really.

“When – how do you even know you’re leaving the best version of you behind?” I frown. Is that even possible? To know? I don’t ask.

She snorts. “Beats me kid. When you figure it out, you find me and let me know, yeah? Just… try and be better than you were yesterday. And tomorrow, try and be better than that. That’s it. That’s what gets me through.” She sets down her empty tankard.

"Do you often give pep talks to random passers-through, or am I a special case?” I huff out a laugh, as I rest mine beside hers. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind either way.

She claps me on my shoulder, hard, and goes back behind the bar. “Like I said, young man, you remind me of me. And there’s something good about you, I can tell – I’d feel bad not helping you out a little. Now go back to your man already, you’re making the place look untidy.”

I smile. “We never spoke, right?”

“Right,” she winks, and gathers up both the tankards. I go back up to our room, feeling… not hopeful, not happy, not lighter, but different somehow.

He’s sound asleep still. The moonlight sculpts him out of marble, and he’s beautiful.

We wake up the next morning to a note slipped under our door. We read it together – seems our plan worked surprisingly well, which makes a pleasant change. Oritias wants to meet me – meet poor lost Alex, at least – this evening to discuss a “partnership”. Just the way it’s phrased, even in a note he probably got someone else to write, makes my skin crawl. Sebastian is delighted, though.

“Knew I was right about this one,” he smirks.

“Didn’t doubt you for a second, baby. What’s the plan?”

He draws out a rough map of the shop from his excursion the other evening, while I start to gather up our things – we’ll likely slip away that night and put as much distance as possible between him and us, so we tend to pack up beforehand to make our escape more efficient.

We’ve been doing this for too long. I miss our Byzantium home more and more every time we move on.

Our plan is simple, anyway – he’ll get in through the back window, grab whatever he can, and get out quick. As for me, I keep Oritias distracted, maybe see if I can get a deal with him and an advance of gold. We reconvene in the room, do a final sweep for any personal items we might have missed, and slip out in the middle of the night. It’s blessedly simple, in fact, which generally means that if it does go wrong, it will go wrong SPECTACULARLY.

We pack the rest of our things together, which doesn’t take long, given we never had the time nor inclination to spread out. We enjoy lunch in the tavern, and although I suggest that we watch the shop and see where the staff goes, Sebastian insists that the place is deserted of an evening as the man himself retires to his fancy house with his contingent of servants, so we spend the rest of the day lounging around, testing my story, until it’s time. I dress modestly but well, and he wears all black and downs a small potion of stealth just in case.

“Hey, handsome,” he tugs on the lapels of my smartest jacket. “Going my way?”

I roll my eyes. “You can flirt with me later, when we’re out of here. I’m only a message away, okay? Stay sharp.”

“You worry too much,” he says as he turns and walks away, and winks at me before he drops himself out of the window. _Yeah, I fucking wonder why._

Oritias is slimy, conniving, more ego than any actual skill, flaunting his wealth like it’s your own fault you don’t have any and he’s just simply better than you, and overwhelmingly fucking _dull_. I immediately despise him. He’s far more interested in his own self than in Alexander the lost prince, which works for me: less chance of slipping up, and easier to keep him distracted by asking him questions about himself. I estimate I experience about an hour of his unpleasant company, and he doesn’t seem to be running out of steam any time soon, which is good – an hour should have been more than enough time for Sebastian, even if he had to wait an age for the coast to clear.

 _We’re in trouble_ , I finally hear Bastya whisper in my mind, _get the bags. Bastard pays someone to hide and watch the window all damn night_. Not reacting is something I’ve gotten better at over the years – had to fake a sneeze more than once before. Not it would have mattered, since Oritias’ attention was pulled away to a servant or employee of some kind whispering in his ear not a second later. Damn, they moved quickly.

 _They’ve sent someone to get him already,_ I whisper back. _Should I expect a fight?_

_Door’s barricaded, and I’m hidden, but the fucking window broke on the way in, so I can’t get it open on my own. The guy keeping watch is out there trying to open it himself so you’ll need to take him out before we can force it open together. Hurry up._

“I must return to my premises at once, young lord – there is a, uh – _situation_ I must attend to,” he said. I tried not to wince; this certainly was a situation, only it was almost definitely a worse one for us, if I didn’t get us out.

“Oh. I understand completely. I hope everything works out okay,” I say, standing up and reaching out a hand to shake. Every second I buy Sebastian gives him a chance; hopefully Oritias’ guys won’t attempt much until he gets there. Thankfully, he seems bound by social convention: he grasps my hand in his clammy ones, far too tightly to be anything but insecure, and pulls me forward into one of those hugs that men like him seem to do, which would have been totally disgusting if it hadn’t put me within reach of his coin purse.

A small win, at least.

As he leaves, I raise my eyebrows and shrug at Adira; best to try and convince her I’m just heading to the room because I’m a little confused and weirded out by the whole encounter. I find myself a little melancholic that I won’t get to say a proper goodbye; and that’s strange, because we’ve been in hundreds of inns and met thousands of faces, and that’s never been an issue - but I guess I like her enough that she stood out. It’s a bit pointless, though, the façade, because she really does see way more than she lets on – on the nightstand by the bed we’ve been using, there’s a note and two mid-size bottles. One is full to the brim with a crimson liquid, the other just under half-full and clear. The note isn’t named, but it’s obvious who wrote it.

_One of these is fake blood, the other is poison for the dagger under your pillow. If you can’t work out which is which, there’s clearly nothing I can do for you. Destroy this note, remember what I told you, and good luck, kid._

I leave a few gold pieces in its place, to pay for our stay and a couple extra days, and I apply the poison to the blade, stoppering and dropping the empty bottle in my bag. Whatever Sebastian’s gotten himself into, it must be serious if she thinks we’ll need it. I grab the bags, forgoing the final check – and if Basha leaves a sock or something behind, it’s his own fault for not cleaning up after himself.

I’m his boyfriend, not his maid, after all.

I drop myself from the window, and stick to the shadows as I make my way towards the shop – it’s not long before I can see the guy Sebastian mention trying to jimmy open the window. He looks lightly armoured, and strong, which is somewhat frustrating, because it means I can’t simply use magic to dispatch him from a distance without the chance he might survive it and call for aid.

Must be why Adira gave us the poison – she must have known.

I sneak up behind him successfully, given his distraction, and cover his mouth at the same time as I plunge the poisoned dagger into his throat, tearing it out, my height an advantage. It covers my hands in blood, but his death is quick and relatively silent in the way it wouldn’t have been had I used magic.

 _About time,_ Sebastian messages, his grinning face appearing at the window seconds later.

 _Shut the fuck up,_ is my response.

We do pry it open, the two of us, though it is a struggle, even with two iterations of mage hand helping us. I can hear Oritias bellowing from the door, the promises of what he’d do once his mercenary dragged Sebastian out, and I’m glad he doesn’t seem to consider the notion that his mercenary could be taken out so easily.

Sebastian hands me a bag of loot that clinks promisingly, which I set down before reaching in to pull him through.

“Kinda wish we could take out the loud asshole too, not gonna lie,” he says as he hits the alley floor.

“Yeah, me too. Got his coin purse though, so…”

He grins, and holds out his hand for me to take. “Shall we?”

I link my fingers through his, and we head the way we’d planned to before, sticking close to the buildings and moving fast. We get maybe a hundred feet or so, before I hear a yell from the direction of the shop, and we look round, to see Oritias and maybe seven cronies standing over the merc’s body, his face visibly red in the moonlight with rage as he storms towards us.

“Ah, fuck,” Sebastian says. “So much for a clean getaway.”

“Already a bit late for that, wasn’t it?” I say, wheeling around and firing off a bolt of fire with as much force as I can muster, as Sebastian does the same with three shining, magical projectiles. It knocks him off his feet, and even from this distance I can see that it kills him instantly. His men stand around in shock, without direction, and I do my best to shake off how _good_ it felt, pulling on Sebastian’s hand. “C’mon, run!”

It takes them a second or two to think about chasing after us, but even though they do, our head start helps us leave their shouts behind us reasonably quickly. We run for about fifteen minutes, before I hold up a hand to stop us.

“Wa- wait- hold the bags and wait here a sec,” I pant, handing over the knapsack and digging into my pocket for the second bottle from Adira. I hold it up to the sky, crimson lit by moonlight, before uncorking and upending half of it on the sand in front of us.

“What are you even doing – is that blood? You know how difficult it is to come by, I could use that!” Sebastian objects. I roll my eyes, and continue.

“It’s fake, idiot. I’m not going to waste real blood, am I? Just… shut up and trust me.” I push the bloodied sand around a bit with my foot, falsifying evidence of a fight, before using magic and the half-empty bottle to disrupt the sand and drip blood in a 30 foot trail.

“Looks like,” I say, upon receiving the bottle back with enough left to wipe on the soles of my boots, “things got heated, and some animal dragged off whoever lost the fight. But if they buy it, they’ll be looking for one guy, not two.” I shake my hair out, returning it to its natural state, before turning my back to Sebastian and holding my arms out. He takes the hint, and jumps on. He’s not light by any means, but I can walk like this for long enough, and with the head start we got, we should be clear.

“Huh. Clever,” he says.

“I have my moments.”

He crosses his arms around my neck, and kisses my cheek - I feel his smile against my skin as he lingers there. “Love those moments. So, where next?”


End file.
